An Occurrence in Gaorrachia Forest
by Lady Nephenee Ranulf
Summary: Regal, waiting for the Chosen of Sylvarant, crosses paths briefly with a most unnatural person. Too bad he’s also stuck in a tree. Self-insert but not really.


Pfft self-inserts…to be honest, I have little love for them. Self-inserts too often focus on the 'insert', so no one ever knows what _everyone else _is thinking. People's reactions to a person who has just appeared out of nowhere and looks like a freak of nature are- to me at least- just far more interesting. So that's what this piece is like.

And I've surely outdone myself this time because Kratos does not appear. _Victory_.

Disclaimer goes here; any mangling of the spoken English language is purposeful.

* * *

An Occurrence in Gaorrachia Forest

Regal shifted uncomfortably in his roost high in the forest canopy. The long hours that had thus passed while waiting for the Chosen of Sylvarant had given him an opportunity to truly take the time to analyze why he had even bothered to roust himself out of his fifteen-year confinement and...kill someone. It seemed just a little unusual that a murderer be allowed to run free to commit the very act that had landed him in prison in the first place, but Regal knew well how bureaucracies worked: they acted in their own interest regardless of morals or principles.

He was about to untangle himself from the position he had been stuck in for eternity when there was a flurry of sound in the patch of brush before him; it sounded as though someone or something had fallen out of the sky and into the forest. Regal tensed, eyes darting immediately in the direction of the suspicious noise. Was it the Chosen? _I'm not ready for this...  
_

With a complete disregard for subtlety, a figure tumbled of the brush, collapsing in an ungainly heap by the side of the path winding through Gaorrachia Forest. "Ouch," it said flatly. Its voice was young and distinctly feminine, both of which were traits of the Chosen of Sylvarant. In fact, Regal would have leapt out of hiding in ambush if logic had not frozen his movement in time by telling him that no, this was not the girl he'd been looking for.

The figure in question turned out to be, as its voice suggested, a young woman. She stood up and brushed herself off, muttering something indistinguishable, but which clearly angered her; even from his perch in the trees, Regal could see in the taut nature of her movements that someone was not pleased. Her clothes were strange: her shirt, now smudged and wrinkled from her apparent crash-landing, fell only slightly below waist level as opposed to the common-place tunic; her faded blue pants hugged the curve of her legs, flaring out at the ankle. It was hardly the sort of outfit typical for any young lady, and Regal considered the possibility that he had just discovered a woman with a fetish for cross-dressing; the forest with its shadows did seem like an excellent place to indulge in eccentricities.

The girl looked from right to left, scratching her head briefly. He could make out her words now: "Let's see…dark, dreary, forested, and clearly uninhabited. Real estate would be cheap here. Really cheap." She focused on a tree directly in front of her- the tree, incidentally, that Regal had hidden himself in. "And that's not a sequoia." Her gaze trailed up the trunk of the tree, and suddenly the former CEO found dark brown eyes staring directly at him, blinking every so often.

"Hello," she said. Her tone suggested that she was used to finding strange men hidden up trees.

"Good afternoon." Regal's brain moved directly to the most logical- and most polite- thing to say, a kind result of years of training and breeding. It was certainly helping him now.

The eyes remained fixed on him. "Are you having a nice time up there?" A hand reached up nonchalantly, pulled an offending leaf out of dark hair, and tossed it away without a moment's glance.

"Quite nice, thank you," he replied, not sure why he was even having this conversation. The right things to ask, like 'who are you?' or 'why are you wearing that?', were all refusing to be said; in fact, the girl seemed to be perfectly content to engage in small talk. And then there was her eerie sense of calm that made him feel as if _he_ were the intruder and the peculiarity.

It was all extremely surreal. "I beg your pardon, but you wouldn't happen to be…?"

"No, I don't believe I'm anyone that you know," the girl said wryly. "I don't believe I'm anyone that anyone knows." She seemed to sense his upcoming question, for the next thing he knew, she diverged completely and cut him off:

"Hey, where am I?"

Regal blinked. "You don't know?"

She gave him a patronizing look. "God. Isn't that kind of obvious?"

"Well, you can hardly fault…" At that moment he realized that he wasn't in a position to accuse her of acting suspicious: he was stuck in an equally bizarre position. "…this is the Gaorrachia Forest."

The girl nodded in understanding. "Oh, I—oh _duh_!" Some sort of enlightenment seemed to come over her; she clapped her hands together in glee. "Ah, yes, and _of course _you're here; you're going to—oh, I shouldn't say that…"

Again, questions that ought to be asked were being stubborn, and Regal was only able to sputter (albeit in a semi-dignified way), "You know me?" He shifted again; this was growing tedious. He wanted to come down so he could properly talk to this mysterious young woman, but sadly it had taken too great an effort to reach his hiding place for him to want to abandon it.

"Indirectly. Don't ask." The corner of her mouth twisted upward in a half-smile. "I would never tell." She looked briefly at the tree. "And I'm sorry. Your neck must be in incredible pain from craning out to look at me. I'd alleviate that, but sadly I'm pretty fail at climbing trees."

"It's no problem," he assured her. "What are you doing here?"

"I have no idea. Sometimes these kinds of things just happen." The girl stood there, dancing from side to side on the balls of her feet for a few seconds before she suddenly went rigid. "Oh!"

Regal prepared to jump down and assist her: stealth be damned; someone was in danger! "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing, no…these things only last a few minutes or so anyway. I should start paying attention right now; oops, I think he's just moved ahead in the notes." The girl seemed to be struggling to speak properly; each word was taking a supreme amount of effort on her part.

"Regal!" she said suddenly with surprising clarity. "Make sure you do the right thing, yeah?" And then just as strangely she vanished without a flash of light or any sort of effect.

The wind whistled through the trees in a way that suggested that it was acting to fill in silence while Regal stared in confusion at the patch of ground where someone had been standing only a few seconds ago. It was unfathomable; it was supernatural; it was—what had she told him? 'Make sure you do the right thing'?

From around the bend in the path he could hear the chatter of a large group of people. A young girl's voice rang out among the trees, and another labeled it as "Colette". That was her name, wasn't it? The Chosen of Sylvarant was coming, then. What perfect timing.

Regal smiled thinly as he prepared to launch his attack, although not in the manner he had originally intended. Strange child though she was, he could recognize good advice when it was given.

* * *

And now back to working on _Never Forget_.

Factoid: the approximate time span of this entire conversation in "real time" (and I did try to act it all out) is a little under two minutes. How's that for an occurrence?


End file.
